Everything Is, Nothing Is
by callmepagliacci
Summary: She comes here one night a week, the darkest of circles under her eyes, and allows herself to be attached to all those wires and tubes and needles.  She hates needles, hates the attention of all the techs.  But she comes anyway, because Bella Swan can't dream on her own.  With my machine, I can make her dream. It's the only way I can make her see me at all.
1. The Red Pill

EVERYTHING IS, NOTHING IS

**Legal BS:** The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2013 CallMePagliacci. All rights reserved.

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

**One: The Red Pill**

The air in the lecture hall was dry, hot. Bella's clothes stiffened as the damp from the rain outside evaporated in the central heating. A mosquito was buzzing away somewhere in search of a meal.

The professor left his lectern and gestured to an illustration on the blackboard. On it, there was a crudely drawn cylinder with a blob inside of it, shaded darker than the contents of the cylinder. Two chalk lines flowed from the blob, over the edge of the cylinder, to an arrangement of squares that looked like an Apple II.

"We conclude our lecture on thought experiments," he wheezed as he walked back to the lectern, the rhythm of his stride interrupted by a prosthetic leg. "With the modern classic. The brain-in-a-vat."

The class murmured as a whole when they realized what the drawing on the blackboard was meant to represent. Bella sketched a quick mockup of the same in her notebook. Her computer looked more like Hal.

"The setup is simple. The experiment posits a human brain, removed from its body, suspended in life-sustaining liquid, connected to a supercomputer. The computer creates electrical impulses identical to the sensory input the brain normally receives: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Consider the following: since the electrical impulses the brain receives from the computer are exactly the same as those it would receive from the sense organs, how does the brain know if it's in a vat or a skull?

"Consider the example," the professor continued. "A lecture hall full of students. It's impossible to know with certainty that one or all of you aren't brains-in-vats."

"But… I'm real," a blonde frat boy in the third row interjected.

"How do you know?"

"It… I… feel real."

"Feel is subjective. Reality is interpreted electrical signals. From your perspective, there's no way to know. Which begs the question…"

Bella's gaze flickered over to the boy a few rows ahead of her. He never spoke, and never took notes. He just drummed his long, elegant fingers against the wood veneer tabletop; the smallest fraction of a grin rounding his cheek. A man's Mona Lisa smile.

The buzzing grew louder. How was she supposed to concentrate with that devil insect flying around? She looked around, a notepad poised to make the kill. The walls of the classroom dripped down, melting into thick tree trunks. The chairs condensed into moss-covered rocks, dripping down into an organic arrangement. The mosquito was gone, forgotten, only the faint slush of a nearby stream tickled her ears. Nothing seemed amiss at all.

.

.

.

Behind my desk, the readouts on my monitors even out as I adjust the controls, like a DJ mixing sound levels. Each slider sends signals down a wire, or a chemical through a tube. Those wires connect to electrodes hidden under her long, dark brown hair; needles bury themselves in her soft, pale skin. Drip, drip, drip—Lethe oozes into her blood.

Lethe, as red as the blood itself. The river of forgetfulness, of oblivion, in Hades. But I don't know if it's me or Bella that's in hell right now.

She comes here one night a week, the darkest of circles under her eyes, and allows herself to be attached to all those wires and tubes and needles. She hates needles, hates the attention of all the techs. But she comes anyway, because Bella Swan can't dream on her own. With my machine, I can make her dream.

It's the only way I can make her see me at all.

**Author's Note**:

This fic will be drabble-esque, no update schedule, and probably entirely unbetaed. It's my way of trying to find my writing mojo again, and to attempt to reconnect to the fandom.

It's going to be strange.


	2. Zhuangzi

EVERYTHING IS, NOTHING IS

**Legal BS:** The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2014 CallMePagliacci. All rights reserved.

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Two: Zhuangzi**

Bella danced, bathed in a bluish spotlight. The stage and house were pitch dark; to Bella, she and her partner were the only two beings who existed. The audience held its breath. The orchestra faded away, and the only sounds were the muted thuds of her pointe shoes on the stage floor and the gentle rasp of her stiff tutu against her partner's body.

Spine straight. Shoulders back. Toe pointed. Spot…and turn. Spot…and turn. Spot…and turn.

He framed her, supported her. Allowed her to shine. The heat of his body caressed her skin as she moved. Quick steps away, small leaps before she returned, inexorably, to his side. He burned for her, and she was more moth than butterfly in his presence.

.

.

.

Underneath the hypoallergenic sheets, Bella's fingers and toes twitch. She smiles. I know she loves this dream—I give it to her often. In the medical history she provided before being accepted into my study, a number of injuries were catalogued. "Two left feet," she'd said, looking down. The last of those injuries—a cracked skull resulting from a tumble down two flights of stairs—brought her to me.

I let her linger in it now, in that state of grace. Her smile, reproduced from three angles on my monitors, eases my mind.

The largest, most central screen flickers, and my heart pounds. Bella…thinks she's in a rave now? No, she's running through the woods—is being chased. Oh, shit. She's thrashing around.

I scan the readouts, search her face. There! One of the input leads has come loose.

"Dr. Newton," I say into the intercom. "Assist my patient _immediately_."

The younger doctor scurries into the treatment room. A touch to her forehead and the signal's restored. Bella's heart rate—and mine—calms. Once again, I watch her mind's-eye version of herself dance. With me. A shadow of me.

I count the seconds until Dr. Newton leaves her room. From my lab coat pocket, I withdraw a vial and regard it for the one hundred and sixty-second time since I synthesized it. It too is red, but darker than the Lethe.

Bella dances, and I gaze. Between us, a long panel of one-way glass shimmers.


	3. Paprika

EVERYTHING IS, NOTHING IS

**Legal BS:** The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2014 CallMePagliacci. All rights reserved.

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Three: Paprika**

Three items sit on my desk. My laptop, currently running simulations of a dream I'm constructing for Bella. The oxblood vial of my new compound. And a cephalopodian arrangement of wires, leads, and sensors. The second two items don't officially exist.

I try to focus on the computer, on my life's work. My study. Which has become almost entirely my study of Bella.

The dream is innocuous enough. She dines at a beautiful restaurant with a man who adores her. He has eyes like mine, hair like mine, a body like mine, but he's not me. He can't be _me_, because Bella has no memory of me to recall in her dream state. We've never met. All I have are interviews performed by other doctors, her medical history, and my machine. That plate of one-way glass remains as impenetrable as a lead shield.

My hands tremble and my eyes flicker, once again, to my latest creations—the vial and the device. Unethical. Immoral. Wrong.

But I so very much want her to dream of me.

The simulation program beeps, signaling completion. I tsk and shake my head. The computer model suggests a level 3 electrical impulse on lead 6 to trigger a feeling of warmth and satiation after her meal. I know that Bella will need at least a level 5 impulse. Something within her psyche resists those emotions—it took me months to perfect the dancing dream.

I make my notes for the evening, and planned updates for the simulation program. The red vial burns an afterimage into my peripheral vision; I see it everywhere I look. When I pick it up, it feels like much more than a few grams. The unrequited has its own gravity.

I put the vial in my pocket. I'll keep reminding myself I can never use it. It's only a matter of time until I cave.


	4. Alice

EVERYTHING IS, NOTHING IS

**Legal BS:** The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended.

**Four: Alice**

Bella loved black. It made her feel safe, somehow, like she could disappear into the Northwestern winter mists. But tonight, she wouldn't be able to vanish. She didn't want to be invisible. Edward was coming, so Bella wore blue.

She straightened the fork next to her plate, sipped her water, aligned the garnet on her ring so it sat in the precise middle of her finger. The restaurant bustled around her—diners chatted, waiters hustled from one patron to the next.

Bella was trying not to chew her lip and muss her lipstick. Was this a mistake? It was a mistake. She should go.

"Am I late?" Edward asked, sliding into his chair. His brow was furrowed and he checked his watch. 8:02.

"No, no, it's fine." She smiled, a fey happiness alighting in her chest. Whenever Bella saw Edward, a sensation—a nudge, a tap—flittered about the edge of her awareness. Had she seen him somewhere before, sometime before they were introduced? No, she knew they hadn't, but…

"Thank you for meeting me," Edward said. The clinking of the other diners' cutlery settled into a soporific rhythm, _tick tick tick_.

Bella gazed at the white of his dress shirt. It was stark white, almost an institutional white. The tablecloth—rich, red linen when Edward sat down—was slowly leeched of color, a bone baked by a desert sun. The two fabrics bled together, sticking. Edward shifted, and the mass cracked. A fissure spread, then another, and another, until the entire eggshell upon which the Easter colors of the restaurant were painted, cracked. The pieces fell away; on this, a sliver of Bella's fingers, on that, a lock of her hair curling over her shoulder.

"You're welcome," Bella murmured, her voice coming as if from underwater.

"No!" Edward reached out to her, but grasped only air. The air grew heavy and smooth, almost pliable. Edward grasped it. It fell, sand through his fingers.

Bella's smile was the final piece to fade away.

.

.

.

I'm gripping the bedsheet, panting and terrified. I look at three things in rapid succession.

One. The drip containing my new compound is empty.

Two. Seventeen minutes have elapsed.

Three. Bella, in the next room, smiles.

I remove the apparatus from my body, ensuring no leads tangle or electrodes cross. I wind it up and place it in an electromagnetically shielded bag, which I put into my backpack.

I stand on shaky legs and walk to the bank of computers that overlook the observation window. Absent my input, the computer continues the restaurant simulation as programmed. Bella dines with a man who adores her; a man that is me, while I am not him.

The IV pole looms behind me, and I don't have to turn to look. I know.

More. I have to synthesize more.


End file.
